Helping Young Writers and Artists Improve Their Skills

Taglines

Dialogue tags are the portions of dialogue outside the quotation marks. They explain who said the dialogue or what they character is doing or thinking.

Taglines are the “he said, she said” type of dialogue tags. You don’t always have to use “said” for a tagline, but it tends to disappear when the reader reads it.

Some verbs are fine taglines, but others are actually movements. For instance, a character can say, mutter, ask, or yell words. But you can’t laugh, sigh, growl, or giggle words.

The next time you write dialogue, watch your taglines. Make sure you don’t have a character laughing or growling their words. Instead of using “That’s silly,” she laughed, try “That’s silly,” she said, laughing.